The Hunt for Red October

I was checking my Email the other night, and after the cute little fanfare, found myself looking a note from my old Navy pal Skip. He had apparently been perusing the various reviews, and asked me if I was planning to review Crimson Tide. He's a big Gene Hackman fan (said he actually met him -- the biggest star I've ever met was Gordon Jump, the Maytag Repairman), and was curious about my reaction to the film. Unfortunately, I don't own a copy of the film, and haven't had a chance to even see it yet, so there won't be a review anytime soon. He also asked about The Hunt for Red October -- that one I do own -- so Skip, this one's for you.

ed. note: I finally did buy a copy of Crimson Tide.

The movie starts out with some hokey bit about the whole story being true, although the government denies it ever happened! (as if the government hasn't done enough unsavory things already) Anyway, we see a couple of Soviets talking on the sail of a massive submarine (we know they're soviets because they have red stars on their hats, and we're reading subtitles. We get the credits, and see the star of the show -- Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) -- leaving his London home, and flying to DC (as in Washington). He meets with his boss, and shows him some pictures of the previously mentioned submarine that his friends in British Intelligence gave him. He wants to show them to a friend of his who knows more than a little about submarines. So he goes, and his friend (coincidentally named Skip) tells him the funny doors that have everyone confused, are for a new silent propulsion system. Jack goes back to tell his boss, but he already know -- because one of our submarines (the Dallas), doing some covert surveillance, listened to it as it faded from their equipment. Fortunately for our side, the Dallas has a whiz for a sonarman, and he's figured out how to track the silent submarine. The silent submarine is manned by a group of officers, who, with the exception of the political officer (who gets killed at the beginning of the film) and the doctor (who gets dropped off with the crew -- more later), are planning to defect to the US, and they're bringing the submarine with them as a present. Unfortunately, the captain of the sub, Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) sent a letter to his boss telling him of their plan. Needless to say, he wasn't terribly happy about it. He sends the entire Northern Fleet after them. This alarms the gang in charge of the US military -- and poor Ryan gets called in to give an impromptu presentation of the life and times of the average Soviet Submarine Commander. With the help of a few convenient coincidences, he manages to figure out the defection plot, and in payment for his good work, he gets sent out to the fleet to explain it to an English Butler and a republican senator --- scratch that -- the heads of the fleet tracking the Soviets. There's a bit of drama involving a carrier landing crash, and some conflict between the American and Soviet planes, but through all this, Jack still figures out more of the plan, and gets put on a helicopter that takes him out to the Dallas. He gets there, and as he's telling the Captain what's going on, the Soviet ambassador is telling the National Security Advisor that Ramius is actually planning on starting WWIII. The NSA actually believes that, rather than his own CIA advisor, and tells all his ships to hunt it down and destroy it. Dallas knows where the ship is -- has the whole time -- but instead of blowing it up, Ryan manages to talk them out of it, and they make contact and arrange a ruse. They send the sub to a prearranged spot, where the reactor conveniently goes critical. Lo and behold, there's an American ship there to arrange a rescue for the crew (where they get rid of all the crew not in on the defection plot). Ryan and some of the crew from the Dallas go over to the Red October using a DSRV (so the folks on the surface don't see them). After a tense moment of silence, the two crews start warming to each other, only to hear the whine of a torpedo zip by. A soviet cries out that the Americans are shooting at us, but Jonesy (the Dallas' sonarman) points out that the pitch is too high, it was a Soviet torpedo. They all start rushing to battle stations, only to have somebody start shooting at them. Apparently they didn't get all the crew off -- one of them is planning on destroying the sub before the Americans can get to it. So, we spend several tense moments, watching Soviets on the inside and the outside of the Red October try to destroy it. Ryan kills the guy inside, just before he can set off one of the missiles, and with the help of the Dallas, the rest of the crew destroys the Soviet sub shooting from the outside. They pilot the Red October into a small, quiet, inlet -- far from any military base -- to hide it for a while, and Ryan and Ramius discuss the boat, the reason they defected, and fishing. Back in DC, the Soviet ambassador and the NSA discuss the supposedly destroyed Soviet missile boat, the current state of the art in deep sea submersibles, and yet another missing submarine.

So, what problems does this movie have? Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Tim Curry, and Joss Ackland portray most of the Soviets in the film. None of these actors are remotely Slavic -- they're all English (except Neill, who's from Australia). Neill and Ackland (who was also the South African ambassador in Lethal Weapon II) do fairly good Russian accents, but Connery's has too much Scottish in it, and Curry doesn't even try. Daniel Davis (better known as the butler on The Nanny) and his clipped slightly British accent (Davis was born and raised in Arkansas) seem wrong for a Captain of an American air craft carrier. Fred Dalton Thompson (the republican senator from Tennessee) also brings up an unusual question -- why do fat, obnoxious right wing talk show hosts accuse everyone in Hollywood of being left wing liberals, but any time there is an actor involved in national government, he's always a republican? Thompson, Sonny Bono, Fred Grandy, and especially Ronnie Raygun. The film? I like Tom Clancy -- and I like this film, particularly Alec Baldwin's portrayal of Jack Ryan. Personally, I never met any non-commissioned officer as quiet and refined as Ron Jones (Courtney Vance), and actually very few officers either, but Clancy seems to hold the Navy with some sort of idyllic reverence. That's fine with me.